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They'll fix everything with 'green jobs' for everyone ... and it'll work this time, right?

Thomas Mitchell

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley and Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford have their hearts in the right place. They want to do good. They truly want to leave the world a better place for their having been here and for their deeds. The location of their heads is another matter altogether.

When I spread the papers out on the table this morning, there was the report in the Review-Journal in which these Democratic lawmakers are touting the creation of “green-collar” jobs. A few minutes later I folded Investor’s Business Daily to the editorial page and read the editorial under the headline: “Green Stimu-less.”

Like our Carson City-bound pair, their ilk in D.C. are all enamored of the blending two of their passions — spending money to stimulate the economy and saving the planet from global warming.

"We will be able to make renewable energy a priority that it has not been in the past," Horsford boasted, saying Nevada could create 15,000 "green-collar jobs" weatherizing homes and making buildings more efficient.

This was quickly endorsed by the Nevada Conservation League, which said the plan would put Nevadans to work and allow consumers to save on energy costs.

We’ll have to conserve because “green” energy requires more green cash, because it is far more expensive to produce than cheap coal and natural gas, which most greenies oppose.

IBD’s editorial noted the latest Pew Research poll found Americans rank the "economy" and "jobs" as the nation's top two priorities. The "environment" stood 16th out of 20, and "global warming" finished dead last.

“Does government really know better?” the editorialist asks. “Or is this whole ‘green economy’ push just one more big boondoggle — like ethanol?

“Recall the ethanol bandwagon that government got industry to hop on in 2007. It was boosted by the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act, requiring the consumption of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2020 — a fivefold increase over current levels.

“Not only did it not lower energy prices as promised, it has sent food prices through the roof.”

Five of Iowa’s 32 ethanol plants are bankrupt.

But you just can’t hold the liberals down or refresh their memories. Back in 1980 Time magazine was so enthusiastic over the promise of something called synfuels. Remember how the economic commissars of the Carter administration said that was the answer to the long lines for gasoline?

“The synfuel legislation does nothing to ease the immediate OPEC squeeze,” the Time article states, “but its long-range effect will be important. Initially, Carter had called for a ten-year, $88 billion effort to construct a network of synfuel plants that could produce up to 2.5 million bbl. of crude oil per day out of coal, shale rock and tar sands. That would enable the nation to cut its projected consumption of imported oil about one-third by 1990.”